Los Angeles history

The Rosey Grier Show, March 16, 1969

March 16, 2009 | 11:00
am

Los Angeles Times file photo

The Fearsome Foursome: Merlin Olsen, David "Deacon" Jones, Lamar Lundy and Rosey Grier make their singing debut on "Shindig," 1965.

Rosey Grier is no one-dimensional ex-football player. He's well
known as a singer, needlepoint enthusiast and sometime actor who became
an associate of Robert F. Kennedy during the late senator's run for the
presidency in 1968.

In 1969, Grier had become the star of a weekly show on Channel 7,
which The Times' Ray Loynd said was "designed as a personal showcase
and the obligatory look of today ... framed by Grier's random efforts
'to reach all the kids I can. I dig kids. I really dig 'em.' "

Grier had been a defensive lineman for the New York Giants and Los
Angeles Rams, and a member of the Rams' Fearsome Foursome that included
Hall of Famers Deacon Jones and Merlin Olsen. Grier certainly was not
the first Los Angeles athlete to find his way into television or
movies, but Grier might have been the most talented. Duke Snider on
"The Rifleman" he was not.

"I started singing gospels when I was 5 in Benevolence, Ga.," he
told Loynd. "When I left I took my whole roots with me. I haven't been
back."

Grier briefly recounted his relationship with Kennedy. "We've
forgotten the great need of a man like Kennedy," Grier said. "We should
care more, not wait for tragedy to bring up our need to love one
another."